Fontana will enforce the strictest warehouse development standards in California due to an April 17 settlement between the city, Attorney General Rob Bonta and the Sierra Club.
Bonta sued Fontana July 23, alleging the city approved a 205,000 square-foot warehouse project next to two high schools in violation of the California Environmental Quality Act. The Sierra Club filed their own separate lawsuit Aug. 12.
The settlement resolves both cases.
Under the settlement, Fontana will tighten its municipal code to require more from warehouse construction, which the warehouse project also has to follow.
“South Fontana residents shouldn’t have to choose between economic opportunity and clean air. They deserve both. Today’s settlement demonstrates how innovative solutions can be used to address environmental injustices, without hindering development,” Bonta said in a press release.
The Attorney General’s lawsuit challenged Fontana’s reliance on the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s guidance.
The Attorney General claimed in the settlement agreement that the South Coast Air Quality Management District is now revising its CEQA guidance for analyzing cumulative air quality impacts. The AQMD said the guidance handbook will replace the current book, approved in 1993.
Building requirements
To build the warehouse, the developer, Duke Realty Corp., must:
- Recycle 75% of its construction waste materials
- Use concrete instead of asphalt for its parking lots
- Install enough solar panels to generate 400 kilowatt-hours of energy per day
- Apply to the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s low-emission engine fund
- Build skylights in worker areas
- Use zero emission forklifts
- Use electric landscaping and maintenance equipment
- Provide bike lockers
- Provide drought tolerant landscaping
- Give the Fontana Unified School District $50,000 to plant evergreen trees along the border between the warehouse and the Jurupa Hills High School
- Give $140,000 in air filters to South Fontana residents, through the city
- Give $20,000 for Fontana to distribute the air filters
- Pay $80,750 to Sierra Club’s attorneys
- Meet the environmental building standard Leed Silver
The warehouse also cannot:
- Idle a truck more than three minutes at the project site
- Build exterior light poles taller than 34 feet
- Use their outdoor PA system 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.
- Drive non-emergency vehicles in the driveway between the warehouse and the school
- Place shipping containers between the warehouse and the school
Updated Fontana plan
Fontana changed its municipal code April 12 due to the settlement, requiring building specifics that mirror Duke Realty’s.
Now, any warehouse larger than 50,000 square feet requires a 10-foot wide landscaping buffer. Warehouses larger than 400,000 square feet require a 20-foot wide buffer and a break room for truck drivers with a restroom, a working television and air conditioning.
The buffers would have to include a 10-foot wall and a solid screen of evergreen trees, which would be replaced if any of them died.
Warehouses also need to plant enough trees to provide 35% shade cover in parking lots.
On-site operational equipment has to be zero emission. Building roofs have to be ready for solar panels, but do not have to be built with solar panels, unless the building is more than 400,000 square-feet.
Five percent of passenger parking spaces have to have electronic vehicle quick charging stations, and bicycle racks will be required. The facility must have a recycling program. Landscaping must be drought tolerant.
Loading docks and truck entries have to be oriented away from adjacent hospitals, schools, churches, prisons or parks.
Original plan
The warehouse is being constructed in a residential block of South Fontana, which already had 20 warehouses within a mile of the site. The lot borders Jurupa Hills High School, where 2,000 students are enrolled, and is across the street from Citrus High School.
The warehouse was planned to have 22 truck docks, 40 truck parking stalls and 95 parking stalls. It would generate 114 daily truck trips and 272 daily passenger car trips, and operate 24 hours, every day.
Fontana had approved the project without an environmental impact report after concluding that it would not have a significant adverse effect on the environment.
The developer, Duke Realty Corp., is publicly traded and chartered in Indiana. It was launched in 1972, and began operating in California in 2011, according to a company press release. It built a 244,000 square-foot warehouse in Moreno Valley, and another 340,010 square-foot warehouse also in Moreno Valley. It began developing another 1.4 million square feet in January, and operates 21 million square feet in Southern California, they claimed in January.
“Investing in land for trailer storage and constructing state-of-the-art facilities using sustainable development practices can help ease the supply chain strain while positively contributing to the economy of Southern California with added jobs, improved infrastructure and increased revenue to local communities,” said Nancy Shultz, regional president of Duke Realty’s West Region.
Their new projects announced in January include two industrial buildings totaling 418,000 square feet on Mountain View Avenue in Redlands, a 330,000 square-foot building at 23840 Rider St. in Perris, and a 148,000 square-foot building at 131 Perry St. in Perris.
Attorney General’s, Sierra Club’s petitions
The attorney general’s Aug. 13 petition claimed the decision that the project would not have a significant adverse effect violated CEQA by ignoring the cumulative effects of multiple warehouse projects affecting air quality. Fontana should have required an environmental impact report, and violated CEQA by not doing so, the petition claimed. Fontana also should have required mitigation measures for the project, the petition claimed.
The Sierra Club also claimed July 13 that Fontana should have required an EIR and mitigation efforts. They argued that an EIR is required for any proposed project that may have a significant effect on the environment.
The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment marks the census tract as more polluted than 98% of California.
“The Project will be yet another source of industrial pollution in a residential community that already experiences a disproportionate amount of harm from the rapidly expanding warehouse industry in southern Fontana,” the office claimed in their petition, before the settlement was reached.
Case information
The People v. City of Fontana CIVSB2121829
Sierra Club v. City of Fontana CIVSB2121605
Deputy Attorney General Robert D. Swanson represented the state, with Attorney General Rob Bonta and Supervising Deputy Attorney General Christie Vosburg.
Best Best & Krieger represented Fontana.
Gresham Savage Nolan & Tilden represented Duke Realty.
Abigail Smith, of her own San Diego law office, represented the Sierra Club. She also is a Sierra Club board member.
Original petition from the attorney general.
Read the petition from the Sierra Club here.
Read Duke Realty’s reply here.
Read the new ordinance here.
Read the settlement here.
